You’ve done art projects, story time, craft activities and traditional games galore. You’re yearning for something new, and by the blasé look on your children’s faces when you pull out the crayons, they’re longing for a novel new project too. Present your little adventurers with an abundance of new activities, and they may never call you boring again (at least until they hit the teen years).

Time Capsule

Help your kids capture a few memories of their childhood with a time capsule they can look back on when they’re grown, or add to the capsule every year for a boxful of memories they can reminisce over with their own children. You may even want to hold on to the capsule yourself to remember back to these sweet younger years when they’re going through less charming phases. Help your little ones stash away a few special things that they’ve outgrown over the years, such as old blankies, small stuffies and a favorite pacifier. Start with a shoe box and help them decorate it with paints, markers, construction paper, ribbon and sparkles. Fill the box and store it in a safe place for years to come. You can also use the time capsule to capture a picture of popular childhood culture with stuffed characters, coloring books, storybooks and fad toys.

Eco-Friendly Fossil Hunt

Create your very own eco-friendly fossils from old coffee grounds, cold coffee, flour and salt, and then let the fossil hunt adventure begin. Start by mixing the fossil ingredients together into dough, and then flatten the dough out on wax paper. Cut out circles any size you like and then let your little archeologists make impressions in the dough with stamps, cookie cutters and anything else that`ll make a good impression. Make a small hole through one edge of each fossil. Move on to something else while your special fossils dry overnight, and then hide them in the backyard or playroom in the morning. Now it’s time for the great fossil hunt, and when they’ve found every one, slip a piece of string through the holes in the fossils so they can put their finds up on display.

Carnival Family Play Day

A carnival family play day can provide you and your youngsters with hours of anticipatory activities getting ready for the big event. You can make all of the games for your carnival at home and get your munchkins to help you decorate each one. Make a ring-toss game from some decorated plastic bottles for the first event of your activity. Cut out some holes in a big piece of cardboard to make a beanbag toss game and let your youngsters decorate the board with paints or markers. Fill a little bucket with some water and rubber duckies, but draw a little mark on the bottom of a couple for some prize-winning ducks. Cut a large hole in the top of a cardboard box and paint it to make it look festive for a toilet-paper toss game that’s sure to elicit giggles. When the big day arrives, start it off right with some animal-themed face-painting before the games begin, and conclude the activities with a picnic lunch on the lawn.

Novelty Kitchen Time

If you’ve got some budding chefs in the family, introduce them to novelty baking activities that will only bolster their aspirations. Before you get started, dress your tots up for the occasion in kid-size aprons. Let them personalize the aprons too with some fabric markers or paints. Now it’s time for those novelty treats. Start off your baking adventure with a batch of stained-glass cookies, made from a traditional sugar-cookie recipe but with a hard-candy center. When the dough is all ready to go, cut out shapes from the center of each cookie and transfer the cookies to a baking sheet covered with wax paper. Place hard candies on another wax-paper-covered baking sheet and bake them in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 to 10 minutes to get the candies completely melted. Spoon some melted candy into the center hole of each cookie and bake like normal. That’s it — stained-glass cookies they’ll never forget. If they’re still yearning for more, turn some crisped rice squares into a cute little house. Let your youngsters use icing to hold the walls together and then decorate their house with candy lights, a colored